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Thursday, February 20, 2014

Celebrating 32 and so much more!

Today
I turn 32. It’s not really a birthday milestone by any of the normal standards,
but for me it is quite a milestone. It’s taken me thirty two years, but I’ve
finally learned some important things. Many are as a result of one big thing, I’ve
learned to become confident in my own skin and not worry about what other
people think.

You
might say big deal, but for me this really is a big deal, and let me explain
why.

Growing
up, I quickly learned that people can hurt you for the things they think they
know about you. Whether that be something you said, did, or even something they
came to their own conclusion on. So my method of dealing with this was keeping
my mouth shut as much as possible. Letting things roll off. Letting people say
horrible things about me and just letting it happen. I was a bystander
pretending like none of this affected me. Let me tell you, even though I
pretended and probably wasn’t very good at it, this all affected me very deeply.

So
good, bad, or ugly, I rarely talked about myself, the things I was interested
in, what was going on in my life. I hid pretty much anything other than
superficial crap, because I was afraid of what people might think of me. Even
worse I was afraid of what they might say and/or do to me.

I
spent the better part of thirty years walking around afraid to do or say
anything. Not knowing what might set people off, what might make people hate
me, what might make them say nasty and horrible things to me and about me. And one day I looked up and realized I was completely miserable with my
life. And the worst part, no one knew how miserable. They knew I wasn’t happy
but not to what extent. No one knew that I had bottled up everything wonderful
about myself, buried it in a trunk, locked it up, and threw away the key. I couldn’t
be myself because what if people didn’t like me? What if what I said left me
with no one? I couldn’t take that kind of rejection.

And
you know what? I didn’t get any rejection, because I’d completely taken myself
out of the game of life. I was getting worse than rejection from others, I was
rejecting myself. And one day I looked up and wondered how I got to where I was
and it seemed like an utter mystery.

And
yet I had no idea how to fix it, or any idea if I even wanted to. I was
perfectly content hiding from the world, and I wasn’t, all at the same time. I
was a mess.

And
then I started burying myself in books. Finding magical worlds I could hide in.
And somewhere in that span of time, I found others who enjoyed those magical
worlds too. I talked to those people, and they didn’t think I was crazy. I
slowly started to open up. Let little bits of myself sneak out, but never so
much that it might come back to haunt me. And never in real life, only online,
with the protection of a computer screen and a million miles between me and the
people inside that crazy place called the interwebs.

But
this was just the beginning of my transformation. As I started to throw little
bits of my real self out online, I still was very much closed off to the real
world. I wasn’t ready to test it out in public. What if it backfired? I wouldn’t
be able to hide what it did to me. My shell was much too thin. It would break
far too easily.

With
so much bottled inside, I still didn’t have an outlet for my feelings. I was
buried in the pages of imaginary worlds, and between the pages of internet
forums where I could only leak little pieces of myself.

And
then one day I started writing. Not because it was an outlet, but because I was
bored. I needed something to do, and writing worlds I could escape to seemed
like a good idea. It was just messing around with names and symbolism at first,
but it quickly transformed into ideas, lots of them. Crazy ones that would take
over my brain and force me to put them on the page. And even though I never
intended for writing to be an outlet, somehow it became exactly that. The
emotions I couldn’t share with anyone else, came out in these characters that
spilled onto the page.

And
then something totally insane happened. I decided I needed to share my work,
decided I needed to find out if I was wasting my time. See if I was onto
something. And for some reason sharing my characters and their stories was a
lot easier than sharing my own.

Honestly,
I wanted someone to tell me I was awful, that I should give up and not even
bother. That I was wasting my time. And at a time in my life when I tried more than anything to sabotage
myself, I got the exact opposite. Okay well not the exact opposite, but I found
a ton of encouragement. While many people in my life, my family and closest
friends, had always been encouraging of what I did, this was the first time I’d
gone into the world (or in this case the glorious interwebs) and gotten it from
complete strangers. People didn’t jump down my throat and find things to make
fun of, they built me up without even knowing it.

So
I went back to the drawing board. I started to learn how to write. I took
classes, I joined writing groups, and I worked toward finishing the book. I was
all in. People saw my mood shifting. They saw how busy I was. They started asking what I was up to. Because
I was on this new high, I told them. I’m writing a book. And the weirdest thing
happened. People not only thought it was awesome, they supported me, they
rooted me on. They took interest in me and started coming to me periodically to
ask how things were going.

I
slowly started to realize that maybe letting the world know who I really was,
wasn’t such a bad thing after all. It wasn’t so bad, because not only were
there people out there who cared, there were also people out there just like
me. People who also enjoyed the same things I did. People that wore their
nerdom proudly, like a badge of honor. And I wanted to be just like those
people. So I pinned the nerd badge to my lapel and began to wear it proudly as well.
And the more I did, the more people stood with me. The gravitated to my genuine
sense of self.

Then this wonderful thing happened. Comic Con came to St. Louis last year. And I realized that there were proud geeks just like me that celebrated that out in public. That it was more than okay for me to do the same. I could not only be myself online, but I could be myself out in the real world.

And even more amazing, last year at Less than Three, I found a similar experience. People just like me who were often afraid because they'd been beaten down as well. They'd been told they weren't cool and they'd shut themselves down too. And others had found ways to open back up. We all talked about how to stand up to people who beat others down, how to band together, not only to sympathize but to start making a difference. To start the seeds of change.

And in those two events I realized, I’d
found my people. Found a world where it was okay to just be me. I’d arrived. And I’d found my confidence. The
walls came crumbling down. I was finally me. I didn’t hold anything back.
But beyond that, I stopped caring what other people thought because I knew
there were people out there like me. There were people that liked me for me.
And more importantly, for the first time in my life, I liked me as me.

But
I didn’t stop there. Because there came a time when people started to challenge
me. It was my childhood all over again. Just because I was an adult didn’t mean
I was immune to bullying. It sucked. I was tired of being beat down. I was done
keeping my mouth shut. Done letting things just roll off. I decided to let
people know that what they were saying hurt, and it wasn’t okay. That the things
they were saying did more than just hurt. They were detrimental because they
were contributing to the stereotypes in the world. That what they said was preventing
the world from changing and moving forward. Preventing the world from accepting others as they were. That there are infinite forms of wonderful in this world, and just because they are all different, doesn't mean one is any better or worse than another. And I wanted to help let the world know that.

Somewhere
in learning to speak up for myself and others, the bad
conversations began to end and the good, productive ones began. People started looking
at what could change instead of who they could beat down. They stopped to think
before they spoke. They wondered how the things they say might affect others. And
that is a world I’m proud to live in, and a life I’m proud to have.

In all this, I’ve finally learned to be me and be happy with it. And I’m so much
richer for it. So this birthday I celebrate all of that, the confidence, the
ability to speak up, my nerdery, my writing, my life, and all the wonderful people in it that have been rooting me on along the way. I celebrate the
person who finally found herself. Who finally came out of the shell and
joined the world. I celebrate the emergence of me!

I love the raw honesty in your blog posts. One day you're going to stumble across the right story-vehicle for that part of you and that book is going to sell big (don't forget me when you're famous :D)

aww thank you so much for your vote of confidence. That means so much to me. And yes there is so much of that inside me bursting to get out. I'm only just now starting to draw connections of where things are coming from. One day it will all click hopefully :)

Jamie: I also suck and missed your bday. I hope you had a wonderful one. I've struggled with the same thing throughout my life (which is one reason Paula directed me towards your post). I think part of my struggle was while I was being successful in many ways outwardly, I never thought I was all that great; all my accomplishments never seemed to be enough. I know having a Tiger Mom influenced that in some ways, but as an adult, I really needed to step up and be proud of who I was and stand up for what I believed in regardless of how my parents felt. I couldn't make my parents proud of me, but I could make myself proud of me. That was probably the hardest lesson I have ever learned. And I'm still learning it. Because there will always be people to tear you down. And then I'm my worst critic. But looking from the outside, I think, Jamie, that you and I are pretty damn cool. And that's what matters most. But we'll always have moments when we need to remind each other of that. So that said, in the near future, Ms. Awesome Aerospace engineer + author about to make the big bucks, let's do lunch :-)

I totally sympathize with the outwardly doing well but internally not feeling good enough! I like you am definitely my own worst critic! I think it's hard sometimes to see what we do as truly awesome because we only see what we could have done better.

And yes lunch or coffee or something, we must do this sometime soon! And no worries on missing my bday! we can celebrate late in person :)

About Me

I'm an aerospace engineer that has been exploring my creative side. I love young adult and middle grade literature, especially science fiction and fantasy. I'm currently writing several science fiction pieces both MG and YA.